pamibe

Obama said he’d do anything to get health care legislation passed…

Obama Now Selling Judgeships for Health Care Votes?
Obama names brother of undecided House Dem to Appeals Court.
BY John McCormack

Tonight, Barack Obama will host ten House Democrats who voted against the health care bill in November at the White House; he’s obviously trying to persuade them to switch their votes to yes. One of the ten is Jim Matheson of Utah. The White House just sent out a press release announcing that today President Obama nominated Matheson’s brother Scott M. Matheson, Jr. to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.

– - – - – - – - -
“Scott Matheson is a distinguished candidate for the Tenth Circuit court,” President Obama said. “Both his legal and academic credentials are impressive and his commitment to judicial integrity is unwavering. I am honored to nominate this lifelong Utahn to the federal bench.”

Scott M. Matheson, Jr.: Nominee for the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit

Scott M. Matheson currently holds the Hugh B. Brown Presidential Endowed Chair at the S.J. Quinney College of Law, University of Utah, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1985. He served as Dean of the Law School from 1998 to 2006. He also taught First Amendment Law at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government from 1989 to 1990.

While on public service leave from the University of Utah from 1993 to 1997, Matheson served as United States Attorney for the District of Utah. In 2007, he was appointed by Governor Jon Huntsman to chair the Utah Mine Safety Commission. He also worked as a Deputy County Attorney for Salt Lake County from 1988 to 1989. Prior to joining the University faculty, Matheson was an associate attorney from 1981 to 1985 at Williams & Connolly LLP in Washington, D.C.

Matheson was born and raised in Utah and is a sixth generation Utahn. He received an A.B. from Stanford University in 1975, an M.A. from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1980.
- – - – - – - –

So, Scott Matheson appears to have the credentials to be a judge, but was his nomination used to buy off his brother’s vote?

Consider Congressman Matheson’s record on the health care bill. He voted against the bill in the Energy and Commerce Committee back in July and again when it passed the House in November. But now he’s “undecided” on ramming the bill through Congress. “The Congressman is looking for development of bipartisan consensus,” Matheson’s press secretary Alyson Heyrend wrote to THE WEEKLY STANDARD on February 22. “It’s too early to know if that will occur.” Asked if one could infer that if no Republican votes in favor of the bill (i.e. if a bipartisan consensus is not reached) then Rep. Matheson would vote no, Heyrend replied: “I would not infer anything. I’d wait to see what develops, starting with the health care summit on Thursday.”

…read the rest of the article.

Politics as usual, eh? This may not be what it looks like… but how coincidental.

I’ve loathed the overly dramatic Rick Sanchez since he worked for WSVN in Miami, so this skewering delivered by the masterful Jon Stewart is… delicious.

It’s being widely reported that Obama will use the ‘nuclear option’ today to get the health care bill passed. Reconciliation.

The plan to pass the bill includes having the House of Representatives pass the Democratic Senate health care reform legislation as well as a second bill containing various “fixes.”
The president will call for an up or down vote on health care reform, as has happened in the past, and though he won’t use the word “reconciliation,” he’ll make it clear that if they’re not given an up or down vote, Democrats will use the reconciliation rules as Republicans have done in the past.

White House officials will make the argument these rules are perfectly appropriate because the procedure is not being used for the whole bill, just for some fixes; because reconciliation rules are traditionally used for deficit reduction and health care reform will reduce the deficit; and because the reconciliation process has been used many times by Republicans for larger legislation such as the tax cuts pushed by President George W. Bush.

Mr. Obama will say that he will be working on exact legislative language in the next few days. Republicans can join him and Democratic congressional leaders of the House and Senate to makes these changes and to pass the bill, but either way the bill will be moving forward.

…which will be his way of saying -once again: Screw you; I can take this country over the cliff all by myself.

And tax cuts is ‘larger’ than this sweeping takeover? Hardly.

As Senator Conrad (D-N.D.), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee stated, reconciliation will not work for health care:

“…reconciliation cannot be used to pass comprehensive health care reform. It won’t work. It won’t work because it was never designed for that kind of significant legislation. It was designed for deficit reduction… The major package of health care reform cannot move through the reconciliation process. It will not work… It will not work because of the Byrd rule which says anything that doesn’t score for budget purposes has to be eliminated. That would eliminate all the delivery system reform, all the insurance market reform, all of those things the experts tell us are really the most important parts of this bill. The only possible role that I can see for reconciliation would be make modest changes in the major package to improve affordability, to deal with what share of Medicaid expansion the federal government pays, those kinds of issues, which is the traditional role for reconciliation in health care.”

Wow… at least one Democrat is capable of telling the truth…

From iOTW:

The National Flood Insurance Program expired at midnight Sunday after Sen. Jim Bunning of Kentucky blocked the bill that would have temporarily extended some government programs – including the insurance coverage.

Bunning balked when Democratic senators asked for unanimous consent for a vote on a monthlong extension six times last week and at least twice Monday. Bunning, who is not seeking re-election, said Friday that he supported the temporary extensions, “but if we can’t find $10 billion to pay for something that we all support, we will never pay for anything on the floor of this U.S. Senate.”

Senate Democrats can continue to ask for unanimous extension of these benefits, or pursue a larger $145 billion bill that would extend most of the programs until the end of the year. This, however, opens the door for amendments, and passing the legislation would take longer, officials said.

Eventual reauthorization of the flood insurance program will most likely be granted retroactively, and insurers can issue policies effective as of the date they received payments, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which manages the program, said in a bulletin this weekend.

FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program is the only place Americans can buy flood insurance. Wonder why that is?

Anyway… hope there’s no flooding while the big boys are fighting out the particulars in D.C.

Bunning’s been busy… and his office is receiving bomb threats.

Sometimes it has to be explained to me…

On February 13th in his Weekly Address Barack Obama congratulated Congress for restoring a requirement that the federal government spend only what it can afford by passing the Pay-Go legislation. Obama also lectured America on politicians who “talk the talk but won’t walk the walk” on fiscal responsibility.

This was the day after Obama and democrats authorized $1.9 trillion more federal debt.

Now, two weeks later the Democratic Congress wants to extend unemployment benefits and has no way to pay for it. Because of this, Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY) is blocking the legislation. Senator Bunning’s mistake is that he believed the president and democrats when they signed the Pay-Go legislation two weeks ago. Yesterday, he told the senate, “If we can’t find $10 billion to pay for something that we all support, we will never pay for anything on the floor of the U.S. Senate.”

InForum
Des Moines Register

I told Daisy that Obama will introduce a new, smaller health care bill Wednesday based on the ‘conversations’ at the recent summit. Unfortunately she doesn’t have much confidence in anything put forth by the White House, let alone the man himself.

YsD called to inform us that wee Angus will be delivered by cesarean within the next 2 1/2 weeks. He’s doing very well at 35 weeks and 17″ and is presumably ready to meet the world, but the longer they keep him in utero, the more dangerous for YsD.

They have a car seat, little crib and a few receiving blankets. So, since we’re not going over until after he’s born, I thought I’d ship some basic necessities over now…. caps, onesies, socks, blankets… just stuff to get her started.

But since I told OD about her sister’s lack, the woman is gathering up mounds of stuff to take over. I want to both slap a Sucker! sticker on her forehead… and applaud her supportive gesture.

But it’s not enough. In a few months, wee Angus will need more. More clothes, toys, food, diapers. That will be the tipping point. Will the state of Florida keep both mother and child alive and well? Questions like this invade my dreams. Last night YsD had had her baby; they were living in the monkey house at Metrozoo where tourists threw peanuts at them.

On a somewhat related note: Would the Russian alien that YsD married for a few rubles five years ago have any claim to the baby… should that person ever show up again? Just wondering.

The Petulant President had no intention of collaborating with Republicans in any way, shape or form. He does not care that Republicans have a plan. The One entered the room knowing that he was “not starting over”. After all, “that’s what elections are for…”

The Show backfired. We’re talking massive fail.

Galatians 6:7
Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

…and understands it!

Spend six minutes with Representative Paul Ryan as he ’splains things to Mr. Obama…

Then watch -if you dare- as Obama picks his nose on live television.

Makin’ history here, people.

This is disturbing. Even more so than the ‘tapeworm diet’ from the same email. My, how far we’ve come…